Monday, August 31, 2009

Eprhyme's "Punklezmerap"

There's been a lot of activity in Jewish hip-hop lately, with new talent popping up regularly. The most recent album to drop is Ephrymes "WayWordWonderWill" on Modular Moods / Shemspeed (also available through iTunes). I'm passing this video along to help announce the album, but honestly I don't care for it much. Eprhyme's got a good patter, but the song is pretty flat and uninteresting. And the production is truly weird. It makes a big show of layering in some klezmer samples, but Ephryme's vocals don't connect with it at all. I feels like I'm listening to two unrelated songs at the same time. Weird.

What do you think? Go check out Ephryme's MySpace page to hear a few of his other tracks. I like Shomer Saalam a bit better, but I'm not blown away.

About Teruah-JewishMusic

I'm a Conservative Jew living in a Christian farm town in Michigan, USA. For me, Jewish music used to be Adon Olam, Hava Nagila, and Fiddler on the Roof. I started getting a clue a few years ago. Jewish music is Klezmer dances, Sephardic ballads and Chassidic niggun. It's thousand year old hymns, three hundred year old Shabbat table songs and 60 year old partisan resistance songs. It's contemporary hip-hop, punk rock, electronica, jazz, and chamber music. In addition to loving its musical and spiritual qualities, Jewish music helps me connect my family with a much broader and diverse Jewish culture than is available locally. The Teruah blog helps me document my exploration and share it with others. Why the name Teruah? Teruah is a call on the shofar on Rosh Hashanna.